Meet the guy behind ‘WhoOwnsYourHVAC’

After serving in the Air Force, Cameron Ferguson followed his father and grandfather into the HVAC biz. By 2025, following several years as a technician and field supervisor at two companies, he was leading sales at a small, 30-year-old Colorado company with a tight-knit team. 

“We all had grand plans of where we wanted to take this company,” he remembered in a call with Homepros. 

Yes, but: “One morning, the private equity execs were at our office,” Ferguson said. The owner explained he was selling, shocking the staff. 

• “It was hard to keep the door open because he was going up against big private equity firms already that came into our market,” Ferguson said. 
• In the ensuing months, marketing dwindled, leads dried up, and service techs went on strike over a dispute with the new management, he said. “People’s families were kind of flipped upside-down financially. People were going to lose their house, myself included.”

What’s happening: Ferguson resigned and landed a new job at an independent company. Running in-home consults, he’d have some potential customers tell him they’d already gotten estimates from two competitors, both of which he believed were owned by the same private equity-backed platform.

• This spring, after one such meeting, he began researching ownership records and was astonished at the extent of consolidation. “I went in deep for a couple hours one evening, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh — all these companies.’”
• He started building a database tool to keep track, beginning with Colorado, and eventually decided to share it publicly on WhoOwnsYourHVAC.org.
• Companies are categorized as locally owned, PE-backed, VC-backed, corporate-owned, or franchise-affiliated, based on data from sources including state business filings, the Better Business Bureau, news releases, and companies’ own websites. Users can flag incorrect data. 

What they’re saying: Ferguson sometimes shares the tool with homeowners. 

• “It’s been very powerful having these discussions with people and calling it out, letting people know that there is the private equity landscape now and they do have a choice on how they spend their money,” he said. 
• As more customers recognize the distinction between independent and PE-backed companies, and refer friends and neighbors, “I think there’s a real viable long-term path for us local independents still,” Ferguson said. It may not be as large as private equity’s, but “ours is way more meaningful, and there’s true purpose behind the services that we’re providing.” 

What we’re watching: Ferguson wants his site to remain a free lookup tool — expanded nationwide — and is exploring setting it up as a nonprofit, with independent businesses as sponsors.

• So far, he has published ownership records on more than 1,500 HVAC companies across 16 states, including Texas and California, with varying levels of geographic coverage. Ferguson is also developing WhoOwnsYourPlumber and WhoOwnsYourSolar. 
• “Independent contractors built the reputations that made many of these companies valuable in the first place,” he said. “I want homeowners to recognize genuine local ownership while those businesses still exist.”

Go deeper: WhoOwnsYourHVAC.org